The Dexter City Council approved the way-finding signage for the Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail at their meeting earlier tonight, with comments from Mayor Shawn Keough indicating that he would like the county to ensure that some of the signs are double-sided if at all possible.

“It’s a two-way route — you can go from one end of the Metro-Park to the other, so some signs should be on the other side of Broad (Street),” Keough explained.

City Manager Courtney Nichols said that the signs can be adjusted to be double-sided if the council wants the request to be made.

The Border-to-Border Trail through town will have two routes through town from one end to the other. One of those routes will be handicap accessible.

Public Services Superintendent Dan Schlaff explained to council that some signs are only along one side of certain roads due to there being no sidewalk on the other side.

“As you’re going up Broad Street to Third, we would like them to be on the right side because there are no sidewalks on the left side,” Schlaff explained.

Nichols said that signs could be placed in additional locations if the city makes the request to the county, which has provided Dexter with a great deal of support in realizing it’s portion of the countywide trail system.

Council also approved the 2015 Street Project engineering scope of services proposal from OHM, but not before City Councilperson Jim Smith voiced his desire to expand the scope of drainage work to more streets in the city.

“Is there some way we could expand the water drainage issues,” Smith said. “It’s just that if we plan on doing all of these roads, I just wish there was a way (to address more drainage concerns).’

Smith wanted to know if the city was pursuing other grants to address storm water in Dexter.

While the scope of services includes the following:

Smith said he would like to see a more complete drainage study applied to all of the city’s streets and storm-water system in the near future.

“There are so many areas that affect more than one street,” Smith said. “I would just like to see us pursuing other ways to study them, because that’s not going to go away.”

OHM Engineer Patrick Droze assured Smith that the hydraulic studies included in the 2015 Street Projects scope of work would eventually be part of a larger study that the city’s engineers are trying to cobble together as smaller projects are handled.

“We’re doing it in a piecemeal approach,” Droze said. “On this particular street with the type of fixes being proposed we’re going to have pretty close to a finished product on Grand Street when it’s done, whereas on other street with open ditch you’d be changing the character of the road.”

The storm water studies in the proposed plan could lead to additional improvements to the street work if the necessity is discovered, Droze said.